Thank you, Stuart. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Zumtobel's conference call on the results for the first three quarters of 2021/2022. With me on the call are Alfred Felder, our CEO, and Thomas Erath, our CFO. Alfred Felder will walk you through the highlights of the quarter, while Thomas Erath will discuss Zumtobel's financial performance. After the presentation, both gentlemen will be available to answer your questions. In case you have not a copy of the report and the presentation, you may find both documents for download on our webpage. After the call, a playback of this conference call will be available on our webpage as well. With this, I hand over to Alfred.
Yeah, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us for the Q3 results 2021, 2022. Before I start on the results, just let me say that the latest developments regarding Russia's war with Ukraine are really a shock to every one of us who believes in the European idea. We stand for an international understanding and the peace in Europe and around the world, and our thoughts are with the people in Ukraine with those affected. Obviously, we have an exposure, I will come to that, which is rather limited and/or negligible in context of the overall revenue, what we do. Even in such difficult times, it's also our task to manage the company. Looking into the Q3, we have achieved very good results.
As a start, like always, I would like to show you a few projects, what you see on your slide Number 3, showing how the strategy develops both for our brand Zumtobel as well as for our brand Thorn. The first one is a typical Zumtobel DNA project, the museum in Norway, which is the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, where over a couple of years we have completed together with the property manager and developer, Statsbygg, in Oslo. Another example what shows the progress, what we do in the outdoor and in the indoor, the Thorn applications in Brno, the Czech Republic, hockey stadium what we did with the light studio Eccentrico, installed in the last quarter.
Two outside projects that illustrates the progress we do with our outdoor luminaires, where we have pushed for innovation out of our R&D development center in France. Here, one in China and another one in the Middle East in Sharjah, and one of the Emirates of the UAE, what we did in the last quarter. Let me just now switch to the slide Number 4 on the highlights, and then Thomas will go into the more details. The group revenues have risen by 11.5% to EUR 847 million, which is EUR 87 million higher than last year.
Also in the Q3, I think we mentioned this, in the Q2 call, we have been able to improve the delivery situations versus the Q2, so that we are back on track in a double-digit growth with 8.2% in Lighting to EUR 625 million, and then the Component segment with a strong 21% increase to EUR 266 million. In addition to the general economic recovery and favorable FX rates, this growth was supported by a higher sales volume and also price increases. The group EBIT rose from EUR 27.3 million to EUR 52 million, and the EBIT margin improved by 3.6%- 6.2%.
The most important contributions resulted from an increase in volume, a decline in depreciation and amortization, lower warranty costs also here, Thomas will highlight this, and also an efficiency improvement in our direct labor expenses. Unfortunately, the rising cost for raw materials and transportation, combined with the partial expiration of government-supported short-term work models, represented then the negative effects. The gross profit margin after development costs improved to 33.6%, but was negatively influenced by a sharp rise of raw materials and transport costs, and the positive effects here resulted from the decline of depreciation and amortization, and again, the lower warranty costs. Selling and administrative costs rose by EUR 18.5 million- EUR 232 million.
Here, the main driver was the personnel expenses that followed the expiration of the short-term work programs, but also negative effects in terms of higher customs duties due to the Brexit and also higher transport costs with the increased energy prices. Finally, net profit significantly increased from EUR 14.9 million to EUR 32.7 million. With this, I would like to hand over to Thomas Erath. He will provide you more details on the development of those segments and our financial performance.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Also a very warm welcome from my side.
In the Lighting segment, due to an improved delivery situation, we could achieve an 11.5% quarter-on-quarter increase in revenues to EUR 204 million. That allows us to close the gap and deliver sales above the pre-crisis level in the third quarter of 2019/2020. Apart from the good top-line development, the result was supported by a decline in depreciation and amortization, lower warranty expense, this was above EUR 6 million, plus efficiency improvements in direct labor. Higher costs for raw materials and transportation, combined with the partial expiration of the government-supported short time work models, represented negative effects. EBIT in the Lighting segment increased more than fivefold from EUR 2.2 million in the third quarter of the previous year to EUR 11.8 million. To the next slide, let's move to the Component segment.
The Component segment recorded an increase of 22.8% in revenues to EUR 90.3 million. In addition to the general economic recovery, this positive development was supported by customer restocking and overstock. We still see that there is a lot of demand, and we think people are afraid that they don't get the product, and so they overstock. Segment revenues exceeded the pre-crisis level. EBIT nearly doubled from EUR 6 million- EUR 11.4 million in the third quarter. As a result, the EBIT margin rose to very strong 12.6% compared to 8.1%. This development was primarily driven by the high volume, leading to high factory loads, as well as efficiency improvements in the direct labor.
Of course, we have rising costs for raw materials and transportation combined with the effect that government-supported short time work models were not effective anymore. Next slide shows the results for the group. We continued our positive development and generated a quarter-on-quarter increase in revenues to EUR 279.2 million. As we mentioned above, the good sales development was primarily driving results, a decline in depreciation and amortization, lower warranty expenses, efficiency improvements offset the rising raw material prices and transportation costs. The partial expiration of government short time work models, as well as the lack of semiconductors were setbacks of the quarter. As a result, our group EBIT nearly quadrupled quarter-on-quarter to EUR 17.3 million. The EBIT margin increased significantly from 1.8%- 6.2%.
Let me now explain the building blocks of our EBIT development for the first three quarters. Let's start with prior-year EBIT of EUR 27 million. The group's absolute gross profit increased by EUR 43 million based on an improvement of around EUR 87 million in revenue over the first three quarters of the previous year. Our gross profit was negatively influenced by a sharp rise in raw material and transportation costs. Positive effects resulted from the decline in depreciation and amortization, and especially lower warranty costs, as well as from efficiency improvements in direct labor. The increase in selling and admin expense had a negative effect on our EBIT. This was because short time work was not available anymore and also, thank God, not needed. Other effects totaled -EUR 1.2 million.
As we had no restructuring expenses this year, EBIT totaled to EUR 52.2 million. Coming now to the income statement. Financial results amounted to -EUR 10.4 million, which is roughly EUR 2 million below the previous year. After deduction of EUR 9.2 million in income taxes, our net profit increased substantially to EUR 32.7 million. Earnings per share more than doubled to EUR 0.76. Going to the cash flow statement, we have a very strong cash flow from operating results of close to EUR 95 million. We also see on the other side that working capital increased tremendously to EUR 194 million from EUR 152.5 million on April 30th, 2021.
Especially higher inventory necessities due to supply chain disruptions and higher sales are causing the increase. Cash inflows from the change of other operating positions totaled - EUR 22.5 million. The most important factors here included a reduction of EUR 7.1 million in restructuring provisions, EUR 3 million in pension and termination benefit provisions, and EUR 4.6 million in guarantee provision, as well as a reduction of EUR 4.4 million in employee vacation accounts. Consequently, cash flow from operating activities declined to EUR 29.6 million in the first three quarters. Cash flow from investing activities was above prior year level with EUR 28.3 million. As a result, free cash flow amounted only to EUR 1.2 million.
Let me finish with some comments on our balance sheet and on our financial position. Net debt increased to EUR 113.4 million. Our debt coverage ratio is very healthy at 0.89, and our equity ratio increased to 34.2%, both more than well in line with our solid financial covenants. In summary, this strong balance sheet protects our liquidity position in difficult times and gives us more than enough headroom going forward. With this, I would like to hand back to Alfred.
If you look at the page Number 12, we look at the development of our sales. We are used to this graph already, and we are continuing to deliver encouraging result. Obviously, you see the last year, first, second, and also the third quarter was still negative in terms of growth impacted by the COVID-19 on the global economy. Since quarter four last year, we have been able to record positive development, especially Q4 with 9.6%, close to double- digit. I mentioned this already, the 5.1% in Q2 was a result of the situation on the allocation of semiconductors, especially on the Lighting brand side, on the high-end luminaires. Thanks to the corrective actions what we've done, we have been able to improve the situation significantly now in Q4.
We also have been able to partly pass the higher costs to our customers, especially on the components level, a little bit less successful on this Luminaire level, simply that business is in project business. Projects we ship over in the last quarters have been partly designed in a year or more ago with older costs. The limited availability we saw in the second quarter, we see that we overcame and with a solid growth now again in Q3 of 14.6%. If you look at the regions, and that you see on page 13, the revenue in the DACH region, which is Zumtobel Group largest market, were slightly higher year-on-year in the first three quarters.
Especially if you look at the quarter three here, we saw a significant improvement. The very good performances here out of Austria, Germany and Switzerland, slightly above, especially Switzerland, is still due to COVID very strong previous year. A quarter-on-quarter comparison shows that the revenue grew by nearly 10% due to these good developments or increase. Also, we see an increase in revenues in Northern and Western Europe substantially by 14.5% to EUR 209 million, especially due to a strong increase in the U.K., a strong bounce back after COVID, and then continuing to drive the revenue strongly in that territory. Also, in the Southern and Eastern Europe, we rose significantly by 22% to EUR 234 million.
In France, Spain, and Italy reported largest increases. Also at this point, I wanted to highlight that our direct risk to the group revenues from sales in Russia and Ukraine is not very high. It's a total of EUR 8 million. Asia and Pacific generated 7.6% revenue growth to EUR 95.4 million. The rest of the world, which includes the Americas as well as the Middle East, dropped by 12% to EUR 43 million, but also show a very strong bounce back in the Q3. Slide 4 is just illustrating how the Ukraine conflict affects the Zumtobel Group, and I would like to share a little bit more what this means for us. Let me distinguish here between the short-term and the long-term implications.
As I already mentioned, the direct sales risk is not very high, around EUR 8 million for both the Components and the Lighting business, Russia and Ukraine. We do not have any direct supply relationships with Russia and Ukraine, so we are not dependent here. Most of our suppliers, especially for aluminum steel, do not have direct relationships as well, and so we are not seeing and expecting a huge impact here. On the long- term, this is of course now a huge uncertainty, therefore viewed from our end with caution. As a result of the conflict, there might be a decline of production and a shortage of raw materials and intermediate products, which may lead also to rising prices.
We see it already on the energy costs, but since basically January has reached astronomically high values already. Obviously, the addition that shortage might also basically lead to a shortage of the supply of semiconductors because they are essential materials coming from those countries for the production of semiconductors. Last but not least, obviously, the effect on transportation what basically is affecting and impacting further the cost of transportation. What we do not know at this point in time is how the neighboring Eastern European countries might react with a lower investment ability, as they are in a very close distance to the Ukraine. Well, with that, I would like to conclude the presentation and have the outlook into our guidance.
Obviously, we mentioned already in the past calls, and that continues, we welcome the increased orders, that represents on one side a great challenge given the current raw materials situation. We are still negatively affected by the shortage of these raw materials, especially on the semiconductors, also with the limited transport capacity, what will not improve now with the conflict. This rising cost for materials, transport, and in the meantime, especially energy, can only be passed in part to our customers. From a company's viewpoint, the current market environment is almost more challenging than it was at the beginning of the corona pandemic, and therefore, our current priority is to protect the delivery capacity for our products and the high service quality to our customers.
We expect that the raw material shortage will influence the development of the revenues in the Zumtobel Group third-fourth quarter. The uncertain situation in the Ukraine conflict also adds further uncertainty. Even though we have only an exposure of EUR 8 million, we do not know how this affects our CEE region, which is one of the growth regions and was also driving the growth, the first three quarters of this year. Nevertheless, in view of the sound development of the business during the last three quarters, we confirm our forecast for 2021, 2022, where we expect the revenue increase between 4%-7% and the EBIT margin between 4%-5%, where obviously after three quarters, the Management Board, we believe that the results, we will reach the upper end of the given range.
These expectations could even be exceeding, depending obviously on the ability of the required materials, especially on the semiconductors. Our guidance for CapEx spending as well as on working capital is unchanged, although our working capital guidance is very challenging under the current circumstances. With that, I would like to thank you for your attention, for listening, and now Thomas Erath and myself, we will be happy to take your questions. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen at this time we will begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press Star followed by one on the touch tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue you may press Star followed by two. If you are using speaker equipment today please lift the handset before making your selections. Anyone who has a question may press Star followed by one at this time. One moment for the first question please The first question is from the line of Michael Marschallinger from Erste Group. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning. Thanks for the presentation, and thanks for taking my question. The first one would be on the guidance and, I couldn't hear you, my line was interrupted. Did I get it right that if the situation remains the same, and especially the semiconductor situation doesn't worsen, you expect the upper end of the guidance range?
Correct. With the current situation, what we see, we are expecting the upper range. Obviously, if this can be improved, and we are working really in a hand-to-mouth principle, we could also be exceeding this range.
Okay. That's the second question on the semiconductors. When you put it on the Slide 14, what are the longer term implications? How are you seeing the situation right now? Does this slide imply now in the short- term to medium- term, you expect it to be more stable and not further deteriorating? How do you define long term here?
This is a very good question, Michael. Basically, let me just explain where we came from. The Q2 result, the relatively low growth on the Luminaire segment was driven by the fact that we were really seeing a huge shortage of semiconductors, which obviously go into the high-end driver, especially for more or less the entire portfolio for Zumtobel Group. That effect was that we were missing more or less three or four key parts of semiconductor drivers. I think we mentioned it last call.
The Tridonic people have engineers have redesigned this, and we have been able to partly replace it by drivers, by ICs who have been available. That was looking quite promising towards the end of the year, and that resulted also in the better performance in being able to deliver in our Q3. Since Christmas time and after that, the situation unfortunately deteriorated again, and you read it in the different industries on shortages. The current outlook is that at least until the end of 2022, we will have to face with those challenges, with the uncertainty of not getting the necessary quantity of semiconductors. That's the situation we are in. We believe that this affects us, especially now in Q4, and will affect us hopefully less severe in the next quarters to come in the next fiscal year.
Okay. Then one question. The call you mentioned that people are afraid not to get the products and the reason why they overstock. Do you expect this trend also in the fourth quarter?
We see it especially what Thomas mentioned on the Components level. The stock levels what we have do not reflect the real demand what the Lighting industry is seeing. We are seeing here the stocking effect. On the other hand, and since the order books of the Components level are extremely high and we see a moderate lower order intake, we believe that the stocking effect might now reaching the peak.
Okay. Got it. Okay. Thank you.
You're welcome.
Next question is from the line of Charlotte Friedrichs from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hello. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one would be, did I understand correctly that the improved delivery situation in Q3 was partly due to you re-engineering some products to work around the semi shortage? Related to that, is there any scope to also do that now in the fourth quarter?
Yeah, the first question, you are absolutely right. The improvement, what we have been able to do is partly to the effect that we replaced, as I said before, certain critical semiconductor components by others who have been available. But on the other hand, also that a combination of other raw materials, what we combined in order to be able to fulfill the needs of our customers. It was a combination of both the availability of more drivers due to better availability of semiconductors and also the better combination with other raw materials that leads to our finished products.
Maybe I add one remark to this. You know, it's a day-to-day fight for these semiconductors. UPS parcel can shut down your factory. Our Component division did an excellent job in designing out certain ICs, but you know, and go to other suppliers of these products. But if you think you are over this crisis, you know, others put you on shortage. The visibility for the future is very, very limited because as soon as you think you have solved the problem, you are getting from other suppliers into a shortage situation.
Okay, understood. The second question would be if you could give us an update on where your energy cost is at the moment, perhaps as a percentage of sales, roughly, so we get an idea.
Well, I could tell you what we have spent on energy last year on gas and electricity. This was around roughly EUR 5 million. We are hedged until thirtieth of June. Our estimation is this is based on the prices of last week. You know, there was an increase of about EUR 5 million. Energy costs would have doubled if we had hedged out the quantity we are missing for the end of the financial year next year.
Okay, understood.
For this.
Yeah.
For this year, you know, we have a maximum between EUR 1.5 million and EUR 2 million.
Okay, understood. How much of your revenue roughly comes from Central and Eastern Europe?
That's roughly, if it includes Russia, it's close to EUR 80 million. This Eastern Europe, that's why we are very careful. It's one of our growth regions where in most of the countries, including Russia, we have a high double-digit growth. That was supposed to come to about close to 9.5% of our total Lighting brands revenue. The majority is Lighting brands here.
Thank you. One clarifying question in the end. Based on what you're seeing right now with the cost situation, if conditions remain the same, you are likely to reach the upper end of your EBIT guidance. If things improve from here, you may come in above. Is that correct?
That's correct, yes.
Okay. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press Star followed by one on your touch tone telephone. Next question comes from the line of Markus Remis from Raiffeisen Bank International. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning, gents. Couple of questions, please. Firstly, on the energy bill. Sorry, I did not get the figure. You said EUR 5 million would be the headwind year-over-year. Is that the interpretation?
No. If we had hedged out, you know, our energy for the coming financial year last week, it would be doubling our Energy bill, you know, from EUR 5 million this year to EUR 10 million next year.
Okay.
We have not hedged up.
Right. Okay. Yeah, EUR 5 million was gas and electricity bill last year or in the current.
In the current year.
In the current year. Okay. That's clear. I mean, what's your gener-
Sorry.
What's like the general forward buying strategy? Can you elaborate on that? Are you kind of consistently rolling forward the energy purchases?
No. We have done some long-term hedges in some subsidiaries. For the biggest plant we have hedged out until 30th of June this year. After thirtieth of June we are not hedged anymore. We are not hedging on today's basis because we think energy prices must go down, and hopefully we are not wrong.
All right. For next year you're basically fully exposed to the spot market.
Exactly.
Okay. Very clear. Thank you for that. On the currency side, I mean, we've seen a strengthening of the U.S. dollar. I mean, if I'm not mistaken, you had some tailwinds in, say, in the last 12 months, coming from lower purchasing costs because of the dollar. Can you remind us of the current exposure and also maybe you can elaborate a bit on if you expect that to turn into a headwind on the purchasing bill? Thank you.
Well, in the U.S. dollar, we have a shortage of about $140 million. We have.
dollar? That's in dollar or in euro terms? 140 million in dollar or in euro terms.
We need EUR 140 million in dollars, $160 million. This number is also fluctuating depending, you know, on our volume. U.S. dollar for next year, I would guess it's between $150 million and $165 million, which we need. We are short. We have partially hedged this, but with the big chunk, we are on the spot market.
Sorry, I just have to take that down. Next question would be on the guidance, actually. I mean, looking at the top end of what you've laid, sales in the fourth quarter would be down by about 5% year-on-year. I mean, just trying to get a sense of what you have baked in. I mean, there must be a pricing effect still helping you in terms of top line, which I mean, ceteris paribus implies that you have baked in quite a volume drop then for Q4. I mean, I understand the current uncertainty, but at the same time, I'm reading here that you have significantly expanded the range of suppliers on the Semiconductor side.
Yeah, I mean, do you have any indications as of now? February is already gone. I think you should have a reasonable visibility on recent weeks. Do you have any indication that there's a more kind of aggravated shortages on the chips around the corner or anything else I'm missing here?
No, you're absolutely right, Marcus. I think that what Thomas mentioned already, if we just compare the shortage situation, what we had in Q2, then I would say the shortage situation has deteriorated for Q4, even though we have designed around because we are having partly a supply situation where at the very short notice our supplier call us and say, You are only getting for the next 6 weeks, 8 weeks, half of the volume. That's one effect. We have to face this uncertainty. This is one effect. The second one is the last quarter, Q4, was already a close to 10% growth, and obviously outperforming that is a challenge. On the prices, you're right.
That's true for the Components level, which is in that sense a little bit easier to adjust the prices. As I said before, on the Luminaire level, due to the fact that even since January, our prices for all our costs went up another high single-digit number. We cannot follow so quickly with our Project business, those prices. The nice pricing effect, what we have accomplished in, let me say Q2 and now in Q3, is already getting evaporated with the costs, what have been risen so dramatically. Therefore we are careful. The biggest lever would be if we are getting much more allocation of chips, what we are fighting every day.
Sure.
Obviously we exceed this guidance.
All right. Okay.
For April, we know, you know, that we have for two or three weeks another delivery of one component, which we can't substitute by another one.
Okay.
They even more dramatic. It might even be that the last week in April, out of today's perspective, we might not have been able to produce at all Tridonic.
In Tridonic.
In Tridonic.
In the Components business. Okay. That's very helpful. Last question would be, on-
On the other side, you know, and this is why we say, you know, if the delivery situation improves, we can beat our guidance. We just don't know it, you know, it's a waiting game, whether you get some Components 1, 2, or 3 weeks more in advance than expected or communicated by the supplier. So it's really tough to give a guidance.
Okay. I fully understand. Final question on Q3. I mean, did you suggest any kind of extraordinary effects in the quarter?
As said, you know, we had EUR 6 million lower warranty costs than in the previous year. That's the biggest one. EUR 2.5 Million in subsidies, which we recorded in the last year, in Q2. These were about the major effect. Of course, we have a lot of counteracting effects with transportation and raw material prices.
Yeah. Okay. All right. Thank you very much.
Just one correction to Charlotte Friedrichs' question on CEE. I was not 100% correct. The EUR 80 million revenue what we do in CEE is for the Lighting brands, and there is an additional EUR 30 million for components. The complete exposure to the CEE market is not 80, but EUR 110 million for the group. Sorry for that.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press Star followed by one on your touch tone telephones. Next question is from the line of Roland Könen from Value-Holdings. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning from my side. Thanks for taking my question. Nearly all of them are already answered. Thanks for that. Only one housekeeping questions concerning the tax rate. I didn't get if you did some elaborations on that. The tax rate was nearly 22%. It is also its guidance for the full- year and the next years or what is the guidance for the midterm? Thanks a lot.
The mid-term tax ratio I have not looked at, but I expect that the full- year tax ratio will be better than the current tax ratio, maybe 4%-5% points better. You know, the full and detailed calculation on deferred taxation is done at the full- year. There might be some effect come only in the full year.
Okay. Many thanks.
There are no further questions at this time, and I would now like to hand the conference over to Alfred Felder for closing comments. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for listening to us and for the interesting questions. I hope we could answer those questions correctly in line with what you wanted to know. Obviously, it's very clear that we plan ahead with all the uncertainties that we had. Let's cross the fingers that the situation in Ukraine is not further deteriorating. We are looking forward to a very good development of our business in the next quarters to come. With that, I would like to close and thank you very much for your time today. Thank you. Bye.